A North Carolina medical malpractice lawsuit filed on November 27, 2023 alleges that the medical staff at Defendant MH Mission Hospital in Ashville, North Carolina failed to provide appropriate care for a patient who underwent an anetrior cervical disectomy, fusion, and removal of anterior cervical hardware at the hospital on February 24, 2023.
According to the North Carolina medical malpractice lawsuit, the patient had progressing shortness of breath, dysphagia, difficulty swallowing, and complained of a sore throat after she was moved to a medical-surgical floor in the hospital on the same day after the surgery. At about 8:50 p.m., the woman suffered cardiac arrest and a code blue was called. After she was resuscitated, a CT scan showed a large prevertebral hematoma at the surgical site that extended down to the upper thoracic spine.
The following day, the woman was taken back to surgery to evacuate the hematoma. She was intubated and returned to the ICU. The next day, she was diagnosed by a neuroligist as having suffered a likely severe anoxic brain injury as a result of cardiac arrest. She remained unconscious.
The woman’s family made the difficult decision to remove her from life support, and the woman died on February 28, 2023.
The North Carolina medical malpractice wrongful death lawsuit alleges that the defendant hospital failed to provide adequate care within the applicable standard of care post-operatively which allowed the post-operative hematoma from the initial surgery to enlarge without intervention that ultimately resulted in the woman’s death when she was unable to breathe that led to her cardiac arrest. The lawsuit further alleges that the defendant hospital failed to properly monitor, observe, and timely intervene when the woman’s airway became obstructed and the hospital allowed her to die from the very surgical complication for which she was placed in the care of the defendant hospital to prevemt.
The lawsuit specifically alleges that earlier timely removal of the surgical hematoma would very likely had been successful and would have saved the woman’s life. The lawsuit alleges that the woman was not suffering from an emergency medical condition at the time, for which clear and convincng evidence of wrongdoing is required under North Carolina law, arguing that the failures of the defendant hospital to notice and intervene as the woman’s health deteriorated took place during a time when prompt care would have reversed her condition (in the alternative, the lawsuit alleges that the defendant hospital’s acts or failures were committed in reckless disregard of the woman’s rights or were grossly negligent).
The family’s lawsuit filed on behalf of the woman’s estate seeks compensatory damages in excess of $25,000.
If you or a loved one may have been harmed as a result of medical malpractice in North Carolina or in another U.S. state, you should promptly find a North Carolina medical malpractice lawyer, or a medical malpractice lawyer in your state, who may investigate your medical negligence claim for you and represent you or your loved one in a medical malpractice case, if appropriate.
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